When visitors step inside the Hazeldean garage suite, they immediately notice the bright living room, the custom yoga studio, and the beautiful finishes.What they may not notice are the features that have the biggest impact on the homeowner’s daily life.Behind the drywall is a carefully-designed system of insulation, triple pane windows, and air sealing that [...]
When we first broke ground on our Hazeldean garage suite project, we introduced a concept that sits at the heart of what we do at Energy Efficient Homes: gentle infill.We committed to adding density to one of Edmonton’s oldest, most beautiful neighbourhoods without disrupting the charm of the block, ignoring the neighbours, or sacrificing the [...]
There comes a point in every Edmonton garden suite build when the structure is complete, the walls are up, and the space starts to look like a real home.That’s when the finishing selections begin.Flooring, cabinetry, tile, countertops, hardware, paint colours, plumbing fixtures, and more all come together in this phase. These details have a major [...]
Lighting has a huge impact on how your garden suite feels day to day.In a smaller home, the right lighting choices and window placement make the space feel larger and more comfortable. The wrong choices can leave it feeling dark and overly reliant on artificial light.Here’s how we approach window placement and lighting plans in [...]
When people think about a garage suite, most of the attention naturally goes upstairs, where the homeowners live. But in our experience, the ground floor/garage level is one of the most important parts of the entire build.It’s where vehicles are stored, where long-term flexibility lives, and where small planning decisions can make a big difference [...]
Appliances play a huge role in your garden suite’s performance. From the energy bill to the noise level to how much space you have to move around, choosing the right ones can make a big difference in how the suite functions day to day (and even year to year).For the Hazeldean garage suite, we designed [...]
Windows and doors play a much bigger role in energy efficiency than most homeowners realize.At Energy Efficient Homes, every window and door in our builds is selected with Edmonton’s erratic climate in mind and installed with care to ensure long-term performance.The baseline windows and doors that we install exceed typical performance standards. They also meet [...]
Insulation is one of the most important elements of every build. That’s why every garden suite we build includes the Thermal-Lock system: a panelized wall insulation method that wraps the structure in a continuous layer of protection from the foundation to the roofline. It’s a key reason our garden suites exceed EnerGuide’s home-building standards, feel [...]
It’s been a busy and rewarding few months on site in Hazeldean, where we’re building a new garage suite that fits perfectly into one of Edmonton’s mature neighbourhoods. If you’re thinking about building a garden suite in your own backyard, you might be wondering what the first few months actually look like. We planned every [...]
This month on The Gentle Side of Infill, we’re walking you through the exact steps we took to build the foundation for the Hazeldean garage suite, each one thoughtfully planned so that it lasts for decades. Foundation: The Backbone of the Build The foundation of the suite isn’t glamorous, but it’s the backbone of every [...]
